Fear

Scream

Fear… it’s a funny old thing. It struck me when I was watching the film “Event Horizon” (A film with more plot holes than a Bible that’s been made out of Swiss cheese) with my girlfriend , when she was literally frozen with fright while I was trying to resist the temptation of washing the dishes instead of watching the dribble that was in front of me.

Event-Horizon

“Got any sudocrem?”

There’s several scenes that depict the very human interpretation of “Hell”, which just so happens to be my girlfriend’s worst fear (being raised as a devote catholic), but for me the film was such a mixup for “funhouse” style horror with no real determination or drive in terms of it’s ultimate ‘point’, just one crazy implausible stunt, loosely based around >1% of actual scientific fact, after another. Don’t get me wrong it’s not as mindless as recent gore fest movies like the “Saw” franchise for example, but at least they have a goal – ‘be as gory as possible for very little reason’, “Event Horizon” however was just all over the shop… but I digress… the point is – it didn’t entertain me on ANY level, not even on that strange primeval “come on, make me shit my pants” scratch that I sometimes have to itch.

Alien

“I love you!”

HOWEVER, stick “Alien” on and you’ll find me located somewhere behind the settee. It’s not just “Alien” either, a lot of suspense films featuring “little green men” get me dropping boxer short bombs, take Signs for example, another relatively low budget film with very little screen time for the antagonist, and yet it still gets my heart racing after the 47th viewing.

I wasn’t raised as a sky worshiper or anything, I don’t think I was abducted aboard a flying saucer as a child and I don’t live anywhere near Roswell. I did enjoy the odd X-Files episode when I was allowed to watch them, but nothing out of the ordinary, so why the irrational fear? Why do some people like myself latch onto certain topics, symbols, animals, mythical beasts or other crazy things and then somewhere in the back of their brain something says “Bloody hell I don’t like the look of that! Make sure he craps himself each and every time he sees another one of those!” and then that’s it for life, or until you grow out of it… I must still have a bit of growing to do yet.

Then theres other people that are completely bonkers – Did you know there’s a fear of swallowing… yes SWALLOWING!!! It’s called Phagophobia. Check out the complete list of phobias on Wikipedia, it’s worth a click for a quick giggle.

I’m going to see Prometheus on Tuesday to scratch that itch I was on about. I’m not sure what to expect, I’m trying to to expect anything, but I think I can assume it’ll be brown trouser time for me… and you know what!? I can’t wait 😀

Skills

Posted on

June 8, 2012